My poem was written in English and in Irish, so I needed to find a suitable Irish term for a Dust Devil. Continue reading
Filed under emigration …
My first Christmas in Australia
by Eda Payne My first Christmas in Australia was spent in 1959 in Renmark, a South Australian town on the River Murray. We erected a big marquee in the middle of a paddock. The heat was intense, every fly in Australia had settled there and the food was spread out in abundance on the groaning … Continue reading
Ghosts of Irish Australia: Catherine Scullin
Caroline Chisholm had worked hard in Australia for the families of convicts to be reunited. No one knew we had been rejected from the list of travellers. Continue reading
Snow in Alberta, Canada
The sun slips behind the black silhouettes of the Rockies.
Fingers and ears chill with disturbing speed.
Faster than in an Irish winter dusk. Continue reading
The ‘Contraceptive Train’ and Dr Caroline De Costa
This brave act of defiance, with Caroline as part of the group, paved the way for discussions about access to contraception in the ROI and particularly highlighted the need to start exploratory discussions on the provision of contraception for Irish women living there. Continue reading
Fiche bliain i nGaeltacht Laimbé agus Ráth Chairn: Twenty years in the Lambay-Rathcairn Gaeltacht
What we seldom see in print, though, are those individuals stories from the Lambay-Rathcairn Gaeltacht experiment that point to another kind of success. Éamonn Ó Neachtain is one such person. Continue reading
The Lillypilly Tree
The branches were bending in the wind. Branches. An Craoibhín Aoibhinn. That was the pen name of the writer Douglas Hyde… Continue reading
The Detail is Where Angels Lurk
The sense of life’s possibilities that this family history suggests is intoxicating. Continue reading
Assisted Irish Migrants to New South Wales in the 19th century
Was the period between 1840 and 1869 the one when the influence of the Irish, at least, numerically, was strongest in colonial Australia? How do we account for the fluctuations? Continue reading
Why Do You Write in Irish?
The world seemed clear. The questions started later in life or when we went to the cities and were asked to convert and change our language to English, sometimes politely sometimes not so much. We got used to the requests, ‘can you please say that in English?’ or the statements ‘We speak English in here’ or ‘I’m afraid we don’t speak that language here’. Continue reading
Tinteán 